Prince of Time

by Tara Janzen

  “Dray says... says... ride, and he be right.” The girl gulped in a breath.

  “I seen ‘em myself... on me trackin’ screen, not a hundred miles distant.”

  “Who?” Lannikan came out of his chair. No one was left in the tavern except the band of boys, and they all rose to their feet, alert and waiting.

  “Sec... Second Guard. Coomin’ out o’ the north, ’tween us and the Night Watchers, with the Home Guard not far behind. Dray says we cain’t be headin’ for Claerwen with Corvus on his way. The temple is the first place the Warmonger is like to strike.”

  “Sept Rhymer then?” the wild boy asked, gesturing to the others to move out.

  “Nay, Lanni,” the girl said. “Not to no sept we ever seen before.”

  Lannikan held up his hand to stop the boys and threw her a questioning glance. The girl nodded, her eyes taking on a luminous sheen.

  “For certes?” An edge of excitement ran through the boy’s voice, and Morgan realized that some silent understanding had taken place.

  Sakip nodded again, and another swath of dark hair fell loose from her turban. She gestured toward Avallyn. “He says she’ll lead the way.”

  Lannikan turned to Avallyn with an assessing gaze. “Aye,” he murmured, “and who better than a White Lady to take us to the edge of the Sand Sea.”

  Morgan didn’t like Lannikan’s assumption any more than he liked the news about the Second Guard. They didn’t need any more of the Warmonger’s beasts breathing down their necks, and he sure as hell wasn’t taking up with a bunch of wild boys on the run. Especially if they were running to the Sand Sea, a desolate expanse of sand and salt flats that made the Deseillign Waste look like an oasis.

  “This party is over, cariad,” he whispered to Avallyn. He slipped his hand back into the lasgun’s grip and started to rise. He knew they wouldn’t shoot her, and he was pretty sure they wouldn’t shoot him. It was just a matter of easing out the door without having to shoot any of them.

  Eleven wild boys turned on him at once, lasguns and quarrel slings drawn. Mayhaps he’d been wrong about their willingness to shoot. Lannikan didn’t move, only continued to stare at Avallyn.

  “Commander?” He lowered his head in a brief bow. “Time is short. What would you have us do?”

  The concession was direct and clarifying. ’Twas only him they were likely to take out. As for Avallyn, hell, the boy was waiting for her to take command. And of course she did so with regal grace, rising and moving away from him.

  “Dray would not send us west without good reason,” she said, her voice strong despite the paleness of her face. “But for wild boys, the honor of traveling to the edge of the Sand Sea has a—a price.”

  Her voice caught on the last words, losing its sureness, and Morgan saw her hand tremble. She balled it into a fist and continued on.

  “Are you willing to pay?” she asked, lifting her chin.

  He, too, was feeling the horror of what they’d seen, and like her was doing his best to block it out. Escape first, collapse later had always been his motto.

  Lannikan glanced back at Sakip, and the girl nodded without hesitation.

  “Aye, Sakip and me will pay,” the boy said, returning his attention to Avallyn. “We’d pay thrice over to end our days in the Lost Forest.”

  “And to the end of your days it will be, until your last breath is taken by the Ilmarryn and released on the desert wind,” Avallyn assured him gravely, and Morgan thought, God’s blood, what were they getting into now?

  A moment’s silence descended on the boys as the import of her words sank in.

  “Will we get to see the caves of Rastaban?” Samm asked, curiosity getting the better of apprehension.

  “Aye, ’tis there.”

  “And the White Bitch’s icy tomb?” another boy asked.

  “ ’Tis frozen still in the Dangoes,” Avallyn confirmed.

  “What o’ Dragonmere?” another asked.

  “Aye,” she said. “All you have heard about is true and can be seen where the Waste meets the sand, but to set eyes on the White Palace is to never return.”

  Friggin’ hell, Morgan thought. She’d told him at Ferrar’s that she was a princess of the White Palace as well as a priestess of the Bones. If he hadn’t been so wine-drunk, he might have had the forethought to find out exactly what in the hell that meant. Apparently the White Palace was a place of wonders and home of the Ilmarryn, and no doubt of her magi father as well, but not of the weirgate. The weir was in Claerwen, guarded by the White Ladies of Death, which made the White Palace the less dangerous of the two. Having Tamisk near might not be such a bad idea either, after what they’d seen on the comstation.

  Be safe, Ferrar, he prayed. If she was truly gone, if she and Jons had been taken in such a strange and violent manner, he’d be years recovering from that anguish. Far better to die well loved in one’s own bed. ’Twas what he hoped for himself when the time came, however unlikely the possibility might be. An ill end had come to him with the Boar of Balor’s blade, and Morgan had no doubt that another equally ill and far more final end awaited him someplace else.

  “To each his own,” Lannikan announced, gazing about the room. “Tell the others I’ll think none the less of any of ye for not going. ’Tis a far pass with no return, but go or stay, I’d have ye all with me until we cross Botting Chasm west of here.” He looked to Avallyn and asked, “Where is your rover, Commander?”

  “In the lee of the Medain.” She didn’t hesitate to reveal their transport’s location, didn’t cast Morgan a glance, and he swore under his breath. She had a damned unnerving way of undermining his plans. He was used to being in charge, no questions asked and none answered.

  “I know the place,” the boy said. “The sandskiffs won’t be at their best among the rocks.”

  “Head them southwest out of Rabin-19 to meet us at the edge of the Waste. We’ll come through Craig Tagen on the twelve second line.” Despite the strain evident in her stance, she was holding to the unspoken rule—escape first, fall to pieces later.

  “And the tender?”

  “Is carrying a fusion block for the rover. Send a mechanic with it. We’ll take masutes.”

  A flick of the boy’s hand had the mechanic on his way and the rest of the band once again on the move, gathering up tack and gear. He made an inquiring gesture toward Morgan.

  Avallyn shook her head. “Saddle our mounts and wait outside.”

  Morgan thanked the gods for small favors.

  “Masutes?” he asked when she didn’t say anything after the last boy had cleared out. Her back was toward him, her head bowed. Time was short, but he was hesitant to rush her. He’d learned more than he’d bargained for in Rabin-19: Pan-shei was destroyed; Ferrar was gone; his damn dragon wasn’t going anywhere; and every time he thought he had the upper hand with the priestess-princess, he was guaranteed to be wrong.

  Rallying, she swiped a hand across her face and straightened her shoulders before turning to face him.

  “Aye, with the mechanic and the fusion block in the tender, there’s no room for us, milord. We could take a sandskiff and head out on the twelve second line with Lannikan, but we’ll be better served taking my rover once it’s fixed, and I’m sure you prefer to return to your crew.”

  “My crew?” he asked, walking slowly forward, closing the distance between them, not liking her being so far away. He shouldn’t mind. He knew it. ’Twas no more than fifteen feet separating them, but it felt like more, and in an odd way he didn’t care to overanalyze, he felt better when he was closer to her. She was safer when he was closer.

  Her gaze slid away from his when he stopped in front of her. “Aye.”

  “But your rover now.”

  She nodded.

  Fine, he thought. He’d ridden a masute or two. Bigger than garrons, they were the size and shape of draft horses, shaggy as highland cattle, and amenable beasts, surprisingly swift and surefooted. Like Avallyn, he considered them superior transpo
rt for traveling in Craig Tagen, and he was sure he could outride any Sept Rhymer boy in Rabin-19.

  What he couldn’t do was not touch her, not when her face was damp with hastily wiped tears. He was no young boy. He could offer solace without losing his head.

  “Geneth?” he murmured, smoothing his fingers over her cheek and marveling at her softness. She was delicate and strong and so very female.

  “What you saw,” she said, still not looking up at him, “what we saw, the black strength of the Warmonger, it’s—it’s as naught to what we will face in Kryscaven.”

  “Aye.” He knew as much. The swirling cloud over Pan-shei had been a child of Dharkkum, the merest wisp of offspring. No man, no matter his dark might, could summon or control what Morgan had seen in his dreams. Any man would be signing his death warrant to try. So would any woman.

  A broken sigh escaped her, a pause before weary confession. “There’s more, Morgan. Far worse.”

  Of course there was.

  “The destruction of Pan-shei was foreseen in the Red Book,” she said, “and Dray... Dray would not send wild boys to the White Palace for anything less than the beginning of the end. I fear our time has run out.”

  Her verdict passed, she started to pull away, but he stopped her. His other hand rose to cradle her face, and he wondered if ten thousand and thirty-odd years had left him still too young to deal with some women. Certainly he’d shown no sense or wisdom in dealing with Avallyn up to this point.

  After a moment’s pause, she lifted her gaze to meet his, her eyes a dark gray in the tavern’s dim light, and Morgan’s heart filled with a heaviness that spilled over and pooled in his groin. ’Twas a slow, flowing surge of desire he could no more control than the rising of the sun. It was nothing so simple or pure as lust, but a wanting he felt to the depths of his bones.

  “All may be lost,” she said, looking at him with such a mixture of fear and longing that he was compelled to acts of sacrifice.

  Damning himself on every breath, he ran his hands up into the silky twists and braids of her hair and lowered his mouth to hers. He was her savior, the poor chit, when likely the greatest act of heroism he could manage was the kiss.

  Her mouth was open and waiting for his, granting him an access that only hastened his doom. She softened in his arms, moving closer, her response everything he had hoped and feared.

  The taste of her flowed into him, a warm earthiness laced with an intoxicating flavor too elusive to name. ’Twas green like her scent, but more reminiscent of flowers dampened by morning dew. He wanted to lick it off her and drown himself in it. Her hands tunneled through his hair, holding him closer, and he was bound by the succor of her touch. Aye, ’twas heaven he held in his arms.

  He could have her. He could have all of her, every gently rounded curve, every quickening response. He felt the truth of it with every trespass she allowed, the slide of his hand over her buttocks, the press of his hips against hers. He sucked on her tongue, a sweet lewdness he couldn’t resist, and her groan nearly undid him on the spot.

  Kyrie eleison... Lord have mercy. Even as he sank deeper into the haze of desire she wove, his mind started cataloguing practicalities: locking the door, clearing a table, getting rid of their clothes. It was all possible, well within his capabilities, but not within any bound of reason he could claim.

  The slamming open of the tavern door proved the point. Morgan broke off the kiss, whirling toward the sound, his lasgun drawn and cocked.

  “Commander, we ride.” ’Twas Lannikan, giving them a curious look, as well he might, considering how they were wrapped around each other.

  Avallyn nodded curtly in acknowledgment, and the boy slipped back into the alley, leaving the door open.

  Morgan looked down at her, his heart pounding, his body aching. She was more than doom and desire. He had felt salvation in her kiss, a trace of it winding through his senses and beckoning him to come forward, to lay his life at her feet and claim her for his own. All he had to do was sacrifice himself, and she would make him whole. The irony of what she represented was not lost on him. In truth, it was probably the only thing that saved him.

  He forced himself to step back and break contact with her. He couldn’t think clearly when they were touching.

  “Aye,” he said roughly. “You may be right, princess. All may truly well be lost.”

  God knew he was.

  Avallyn watched him turn and leave, and took a great breath to pull herself together. Shadana. Her mother’s warnings were as naught compared to Morgan’s kisses.

  She raised her fingers to her lips and felt the warmth he’d left on her skin. The taste of him was everywhere inside her mouth, strangely wonderful, both soothing and exciting. ’Twas time to deep-scent the prince and find out all that she could about the man fate had delivered into her arms. After what they’d seen in Pan-shei, she dare not leave anything to chance. If there were other weaknesses in him besides the wine, she would know of them before Tamisk. Her father would not treat lightly any additional failings, and she would not have Morgan subjected to too much of Tamisk’s meddling and transforming magic. Nor would she have him given to an Ilmarryn maid to be bent to her father’s will. ’Twas bad enough that her mother’s will must govern her dealings with him, for if left to her own devices, Avallyn knew she would be tempted to sample much more than just the thief’s kiss.

  ~ ~ ~

  Leagues south of the White Palace, beside a dune cove washed inland by the Sand Sea, Tamisk pulled his masute to a halt. Red dust filtered down through the fading sunlight, muting the landscape and giving an ochre hue to the stone ruin jutting up out of the Waste. He’d left the palace in a rover at dawn, shortly after the accounts from Pan-shei had been confirmed. Only three items of business had detained him from heading south immediately: finding an escort of Sha-shakreig to intercept Avallyn and change her course from the palace and the Lost Forest to this barren place, sending a call to arms to every sept in the Deseillign Waste; and convincing Au Cade, the reigning Queen of Deseillign, to at last relinquish her hold on the Orange Book of Stone, the Gratte Bron Le, and give it to him.

  The time had come, and he must make haste.

  Swinging down off his mount, he removed the book from his saddlebag and whispered a command for the animal to stay. He’d picked up the masute in Sept Siell and continued on alone to the ruin hidden amongst the dunes and a trailing outcrop of granite. ’Twas a closed place, Nemeton’s Hart Tower, kept veiled by mirage and unknown to all except Tamisk, the lord of Sept Siell, and the one who had helped him dig the tower out of the sand, Rhayne. Her presence was greatly required again if he was going to succeed in his task. She had one of the three missing Books of Lore. He needed them all.

  He entered a darkened doorway banked into a dune and climbed the spiraling stairs two at a time, taking in one crumbling black step and one crumbling white step with each stride. Shafts of reddish light moted with windblown sand slanted down through the arrow loops ringing the tower, heating the stone in small patches on the opposite wall. Tamisk felt the warmth on his skin as he passed through each luminous band, and he felt the coldness that emanated from the stone left in the dark. Light and darkness, heat and cold. They rippled over him in contrasting waves, a pattern of what had come to pass too soon.

  Upon reaching the landing, he strode over tumbled rocks and drifts of sand to the remains of the Druid Door. On the centermost plank, a gargoyle of hideous countenance glared at him, its rock crystal eyes undimmed by the eons since their making. Iron fangs rusted to bloody red clutched a bronze knocker hanging from the gargoyle’s mouth. Tamisk used the piece lightly, pushing the door a bare quarter inch to realign it with its frame. Decrepit though the door was, its locks still held. He worked them with a skilled hand, and only after gaining entrance into the main solar did he allow himself to feel the dull pain that had threatened to engulf him all morn. He squeezed his eyes shut and slumped back against the door. Pan-shei had been destroyed. The fool, Corvus
Gei, had unleashed his murky cloud over the slum, and every hovel and denizen within a mile radius had been sucked into the naked singularity of Dharkkum’s black hole. For miles beyond ground zero, the city of rags had become uninhabitable. Even the Old Dominion had felt the Warmonger’s wrath, with black wisps of the fell mist blown eastward by the wind, consuming the first thing or person to cross their paths.

  And it was all happening too soon.

  He swore beneath his breath, an ancient, powerless curse, and opened his eyes, looking to the center of the room where a desiccated oak tree pushed up through the floor and out through the ceiling into the eyrie above. ’Twas Llynya’s oak, preserved in its sandy tomb for thousands of years, petrified into stone.

  Across the room, on the lintel above a deep-set door, were the words written to guide him. Amor... lux... veritas—sic itur ad astra. Love... light... truth—such is the way to the stars. Nemeton’s words marked the path into the heart of the bargain he had made ten thousand years ago to seal their fate this day.

  Blood to save the world, Tamisk thought, placing his hand over the small vials secreted in a pocket on his chest. ’Twas always blood, the elixir of salvation.

  The Beirdd Braint of the Quicken-tree had seen his own bloody death at the hands of a Dark Age brute named Gwrnach the Destroyer. Arch Druid, Magia Lord, and adept of the Books of Lore, Nemeton had not tried to avoid his fate, but had left the sanctuary of the White Palace and gone back in time to ancient Carn Merioneth, setting the wheel turning toward the day that had come too quickly upon Tamisk—this day.

  He crossed the floor to the deep-set door, pushed it open, and was engulfed in a sea of green. Shimmering leaves of a hundred verdurous hues canopied the stairwell leading upward into the eyrie, growing from branches Tamisk had brought to life with his nurturing magic. He blew his breath into the air as he climbed, swirls of blue and green exhalations, and the leaves fluttered in response to their maker, reaching for him. Crumbling stones and chunks of mortar littered the steps, but did not hinder his ascent.

  Veritas—truth—he knew. Tamisk lived his days distilling and applying truth. But of light, he knew only what was written in the Books; and of love, he would be the first to admit that he knew nothing.